


The Spoils of War

by peppermint_smile



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 11:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13246848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermint_smile/pseuds/peppermint_smile
Summary: Everything about her is a weapon.





	The Spoils of War

There is a room.

A dimly-lit space, cracked drywall surrounding her and a damp, dark ceiling above; the only exit having just been cut off by a locked door. The air is full of putrid breath, a coalescing cloud of foul-smelling liquor and unbrushed teeth and stale spit. Tess swallows, almost relishing the bitter taste in her throat instead.

There are hands. Too-soft hands with too-short fingers and fingernails chewed down to the meat; too-rough hands worn like aged leather and harsh like sandpaper. They clamp around her wrists, grope at her breasts, spread her legs and they hurt. She’s passed around like a trophy, a puff of an illicit cigar, a cut of succulent meat. Mauled and groped and manhandled. A _thing_. An object.

The ceiling isn’t all the same color. She can see the old brush strokes after staring at it for a while.

She will not close her eyes.

There’s a taste in her mouth, the iron and the rust where she’s just bit her tongue, pain meant to distract because she will not scream. One of them tries to kiss her, and instead she bashes his nose in with her head. She’s rewarded with a backhand across the face, but no one else tries. The throb in her cheek and the roil in her throat feels almost like victory. She breathes when the last man finishes, at last, regulating her breath to not gag right there on the bed.

Anger, nausea, and shame.

Disgust and weakness.

She will not cry.  

-

It’s funny how your own vomit can taste so foul. It’s got to be some kind of metaphor, she thinks, some complicated universal message saying _look! Look at how fucking disgusting you are!_ Tess coughs, staring at the puddle on the broken pavement with detachment, shivering in seventy-degree weather under a small patch of space illuminated by moonlight.

She’s going into shock, rational thought whispers. She can barely hear it over the sound of her mind screaming.

-

By the time she drags herself through the door, Joel has pulled most of his hair out of his head, he thinks, and cut his left palm open on the shards of glass he crushed against the wall. He’s running on anger that creeps around the room, expanding and retracting like a living, breathing thing he can’t control. There’s a knot in his gut and all he wants is flesh to beat until there’s blood on his hands and death at his feet.

The sound of the handle turning on the door breaks the tension with a near audible snap, and the sheer whiplash makes him stumble on his feet, falter mid-step where he’s been pacing for the last hour and a half.

He waits, frozen in place.

Her face is shuttered, her posture rigid yet wobbly all at once as she steps out of her shoes. She won’t meet his eyes. Her head’s a mess of knotted hair, her skin sweaty, her clothing torn and bloody. Her jaw tightens, lips pressed together as she reaches in her pocket to slap something on the table beside her. Ration cards - eight of them, damp and torn, stinking of blood.

Joel watches her move to the kitchen, her steps as silent as ever, her limbs wooden, awkward, her eyes sightless yet leading. It’s as if there’s a void where her mind should be, leaving him with nothing but a palace of echos, bereft and clean of her. He feels a tic in his cheek, his head following her motion, gaze glued to her back. He knows if someone were to look close enough, they’d find that he’s never had much of a poker face. Overwhelmed with impotence, there’s nothing he can do right now, except stand by and hover like a wide-eyed acolyte watching a goddess tie the noose of her own decisions around her neck.

But please, don’t forget to kick the chair, for fuck’s sake.

Cabinets open, cabinets close, and it’s all too silent not to be announcing a storm. He approaches, his steps clear, announcing his presence in bold, bright strikes. She doesn’t turn, doesn’t do anything to acknowledge him. Her trembling hands uncork their half-empty bottle of scotch, pour out generous fingers into a cloudy, chipped glass, and she drinks. The glass is set back down, pushed away with a shudder.

The sight jump-starts all his instincts. He approaches and places a light hand at the small of her back, a gesture made to offer comfort. He’s done it before. She’s never objected to having his hands on her skin.

She flinches, tenses and turns, her jaw set. “Don’t _touch_ me,” she grits, her voice so low, so damaged and rough it’s almost a growl, a plea and a command all in one. Joel steps back helpless and bewildered, and watches her retreat with the alcohol in her hand.

-

Everything about her is a weapon. A well-oiled pistol, a knife sharpened, sharpened, sharpened, stroked repeatedly against a whetstone. She wasn’t made to end lives, but the outbreak has crafted her with expert hands, arrogant hands, cruel hands.

Where there’s an ending, there are beginnings, but Tess has lost track of hers. She’s left them abandoned at some time, some place. She doesn’t remember anything else, can never be sure there was anything other than this.

Here’s the catch: Tess never forgets, can never forget.

She remembers every victory, every failure, every death. Every bit of stolen pleasure, pain and blood on her hands, dripping down the drain like waste. It’s all etched in the back of her skull, engraved on her bones, meant to be all that remains when she’s nothing more than ashes and a memory, a name without records.

The whiskey is supposed to make her forget. To take the memories away, to make her hands steady again, to suppress the urge to vomit. But the whiskey’s already half gone with a blaze down her throat, her tongue going numb from the burn, and all she can feel are hands - groping, bruising, holding her down.

She thought a shower would help, that scalding her flesh would drive the itching away, that the pain of scrubbing her skin raw might stop her from feeling like she’s trapped inside her own body, a suit two sizes too small. A sob hooks into the back of her throat, raw and sharp with the copper taste of failure.

She was wrong.

Everything about her is a weapon. She’s taught herself how to use it, how to bury all the weaknesses and gather her strengths. She’s taught herself to find profit, to better herself, to build up an armor that’ll bend but not break.

All the lessons she’s learned, all the rules she’s taken to heart - what did she do so wrong?

Why does she feel so small?

**Author's Note:**

> [Holla @ ya gurl on Tumblr](http://anne1marie.tumblr.com)


End file.
